Elbow Pain
Elbow pain is most commonly seen through direct trauma to the arm or through repetitive movements.
Elbow Pain | Osteopath Sutton
Examples of trauma include falling onto your arm, sports collisions, or injury while lifting heavy furniture or weights. Repetitive strain examples include sports such as tennis, squash, cricket; and jobs such as builders, brick layers, carpenters, and decorators.
Another major cause for elbow pain is desk related jobs that require lots of keyboard and mouse use, causing strain to the muscles that move the wrist and elbow. This could be through incorrect desk height set up, chair height, keyboard and mouse position, or frequency of use. This applies not only to the working population but anyone using laptops, computers, or gaming consoles for many hours in the day.
Elbow pain can also be caused from problems in the neck, upper back, or shoulder, travelling down to the elbow.
Often painful elbows are a result of wear and tear related inflammation of the associated arm and forearm muscles. Grip related tasks can become difficult in terms of pain and sensations of weakness. Gradually the arm, elbow or grip becomes less durable to the pain and so onset of pain or muscle fatigue becomes quicker.
Associated symptoms of elbow pain can include: constant ache or low-grade pain within the joint, sharp pain when gripping objects, weakness in holding objects, pain or inability to fully extend elbows, neck pain, shoulder pain, wrist pain.
Treatment: It is always incredibly important to assess the muscles and joints of the wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck and upper back. Elbow pain can be a result of nerve entrapment in the neck or shoulder, or as a result of muscle compensation from hand or shoulder problems.
Treatment will involve osteopathic mobilisation techniques to improve mobility of the joints that make up the elbow including manipulation techniques. Often a great deal of deep tissue massage is required to ease the tension in the forearm, upper arm, and shoulder to reduce elbow pain.
Strengthening or flexibility advice for the muscles associated with the wrist, forearm, shoulder or neck may be advised. This will depend on whether the elbow pain is caused by muscular weakness, or tightness.
Specific postural advice will also be given; whether it be sitting or desk based, the way in which you’re using your arms and shoulders during manual labour tasks and jobs, sports specific movements, and using musical instruments.
If you are suffering with elbow pain, book an appointment with your osteopath and let them help you out of pain.
